Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared
not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his
lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-
pouch he carried.

The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming
suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles,
and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward
the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home--his mother, the
brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little
sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a
toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.

"O Severus!" whispered Timokles, "what didst thou see, when thou
visitedst Egypt five years ago, that thou shouldest decree such evil
against the Egyptian Christians now?"

Softly Timokles went his way in the dark. He was hungry, yet he
dared eat little of the dried dates he had with him. When would he
find other food?

For a time he looked warily around, but soon his sense of loneliness
overcame his fear, and he watched more for some sign of his four
friends than for an indication of an enemy.

"Perhaps some Christian hath escaped, even as I have," thought
Timokles.

He started.